
Class. 
Book 



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Copyright^ . 



£_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSITt 



SHIPS IN PORT 



BY 
LEWIS WORTMNGTON SMITH 



«* 



G- P- PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 

Zhc fmicfterbocfeer press 

J9J6 






Copyright, 19 16 

BY 

LEWIS WORTHINGTON SMITH 




Ube TKnfcfeerbocfeer press, IFlew 12orfe 

JUN 12 1916 
©CI.A431438 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Ships in Port. (Putnam's Magazine) . . i 

On the Open Road. (Outing) ... 2 

The Great Good World. (Reedy 1 s Mirror) . 3 

After Ingathering. (The Youth's Companion) 6 
After Voyaging. (People's Magazine) . .7 

Spring Rain. (Lippincott' s Magazine) . . 8 
Out from Lynn. (The Forum) . . .10 

When My Life Slips Tether. (The Forum) . 12 

Back from the Hospital. (The Forum) . 15 

Song for Labor Day. (Pittsburg Despatch) . 21 

The Singer. (Appleton's Magazine) . . 23 

With Marjorie in April. (The Independent) 26 

In the Workshop. (Poet Lore) . . . 27 

Alma Barbelow. (The Youth's Companion) 31 

The Highways of the Nations. (Out West) 34 

Gypsying. (The Independent) ... 36 



in 



iv Contents 



PAGE 



Souls of Song. (Ainslee's Magazine) . 38 

Yielding the Quest. (The Poetry Journal) 39 

The Prairie. (The Critic) .... 45 

The Fire Dancer. (Appleton's Magazine) . 49 

Whither Away. (The Bellman) ... 52 

The Water in the Turbine. (Success) . 53 

Ispahan. (The Woman's Home Companion) 56 

Stories. (The Bellman) .... 58 

In Recompense. (The Cavalier) ... 60 

The Violin. (The Greater West) ... 62 

Breaking the Road. (The Bellman) . . 65 

Convalescence. (The Forum) ... 67 

The Power House. (The Greater West) . 71 

As the Winds Flit. (Ainslee's Magazine) . 73 

Aglavaine. (Poetry) 74 

Facing the Verdict 76 

Alicia Told Me. (Home Magazine) . .81 

The Lost Arcady. (Metropolitan Magazine) 82 

April in the Air. (The Reader) . . 83 



Contents 



PAGE 



Iron from Sinai. (Technical World Magazine) 84 

Driftwood. (Poetry) 90 

At the Motorman's Window. (Technical 
World Magazine) ..... 92 

Art and the World. (Metaphysical Magazine) 94 

Artists. (Technical World Magazine) . . 108 

Coats for the Tourney. (New York Times) in 

News from Yorktown. (The Independent) . 113 

Taking the Road. (The Bellman) . .115 

A Shadow of Things to Come. (Des Moines 
Register) . . . . . . .116 



SHIPS IN PORT 

When the ships come in 

I shall sit and spin, 
Twisting the carded wool they bring, 
Turning the threads as I dream and sing, 
While the funnels smoke and the flags break free, 

And my heart is out at sea. 

When the ships come in 

I shall sit and spin, 
Twisting the fancies brave and new, 
Wonders for which men search earth through — 
The Levant, Manila, and Pechili — 

That my heart has brought from sea. 

When the ships come in 

I shall sit and spin, 
Twisting the colors; then some day 
The threads will snap. I shall rise and sway, 
Trembling, blind, to the heart of me, 

While the ships put out to sea. 



ON THE OPEN ROAD 

Out to the joy of the open road 

Soon shall my feet be gone, 
Led by the dreams of the heart of youth 

Over the slopes of dawn. 
Desert and valley and heights of snow, 

Plains where the rivers run; 
Jungles and steppes of the frozen north, 

Islands that take the sun. 

Nautch girls that dance in the silent noon, 

Sphynx of the world-old Nile; 
Caravans crossing the trackless waste, 

Pyramids pile on pile. 
Italy, Greece and the Caucasus, 

Persia and Hindoostan; 
I shall see them all with the heart of a boy 

Alive in the heart of the man. 

Glad with the love of the open road, 

Free-hearted I take my way. 
Cities and men and a life of change 

Shall welcome me day by day. 
Midnights shall pass with their starry deeps, 

Noons shall have come and gone; 
While still from the gray of the skies before 

Breaks the orient rose of dawn. 



THE GREAT GOOD WORLD 

In the garnering of the years that death shall treas- 
ure, 

In the passing of the days that come no more, 
You shall never make me find life's fullest measure 

In the broken line of foam that beats the shore. 
In the mist that flies and hides the somber distance 

Where the ships may float or plunge in groaning 
wreck, 
I shall never pause with eyes of dumb persistence 

Looking vainly for some dim horizon speck. 

Let the harbor bar give passage or denial, 

I shall find it, pass or founder as I may. 
When the hour has come and fate has called to trial, 

I shall turn my face unfaltering to the day; 
But the deed is of the world, the joy of doing 

Ends forever when my boat is outward bound. 
Life that beats where summer's golden breath is 
wooing 

Comes upon me in a rush of light and sound. 

Pilgrim paths have crossed my own and pilgrim 
voices 
Echoed promises of life beyond the bourne. 
In the world of here and now my soul rejoices. 
It must end, but while it lasts I shall not mourn, 

3 



4 The Great Good World 

Life is double, being, doing. For me never 
One alone can be enough to sate desire. 

Through the blankness of the time men call forever, 
Let me perish into dust that once was fire. 

For the thing that makes life noble is achievement, 

Deeds that leap the pale of night from sun to sun. 
Earth becomes a smoking altar of bereavement 

Only when the will to do finds all things done. 
Now the distance is a splendor and a glory, 

And our human strength still triumphs over time. 
Earth is better in one moment of its story 

Than the asons of all heavens death may climb. 

Give me earth with women's voices, children's laugh- 
ter, 

Breath of storm upon the wind and tossing leaves. 
Never trouble me with talk of what comes after, 

Dead conjectures that an idle world receives. 
Give me earth with all her moods of gloom and 
glamor, 

Drip of rain and breast of robin in the sun, 
Human speech in hours of peace and hours of clamor 

When through tumult some new order is begun. 

Give me earth with man high-hearted making high- 
ways, 
East and west and north and south from land to 
land, 
Building palaces with noble courts and byways 
In which love and joy and knowledge may expand; 



The Great Good World 5 

Quiet firesides where the genius of all ages 

Spreads the wonders man has treasured out of 
time, 

Busy merchant courts whose varied wealth engages 
All the toil of every race in every clime. 

Give me earth with washing seas and rolling rivers 

Where the argosies of fortune come and go; 
Streets of cities where each human passion quivers 

And the night is only day's long afterglow; 
Where I pass a thousand faces warm and breathing, 

Each a strangeness in its own desires and dreams; 
Where ambitions, transports, yearnings all are seeth- 
ing, 

And forever pour the changing human streams. 

I shall die, but when death comes I shall be ready. 

I have known the great good world and lived its joy. 
So my eyes shall look farewell then, firm and steady, 

Asking nothing for the future's dull employ. 
Let the hearts that find earth empty fail and falter, 

Crying anxious questions forward to the dark. 
It is full for me beyond my wish to alter, 

Though beyond it there should never glow a spark. 



AFTER INGATHERING 

From purple grape the juice is pressed, 
The grain and nuts are stored. 

The time has come to give the best 
Your memory has in hoard. 

And I will watch the fireplace flame, 
The breath of song shall blow; 

And you will tell across the game 
Old tales of long ago. 

Outside the winter storm and cold, 

The winter warmth within, 
And all the things we loved of old, 

Soft-footed, thronging in. 

Our curtained peace shall hold the best 

That fancy seeks or seems. 
The strenuous hours shall pause and rest, 

Like thoughts that drift in dreams. 



AFTER VOYAGING 

Oh, the winds blow north and the winds blow south 
And the good ship rides at the river's mouth, 
But here let me rest with my own once more, 
While I watch her sails as she slips from shore. 

Oh, the world lies east and the world lies west, 
But here is the hearth that my soul loves best, 
And here are the eyes that can kindle mine 
When the twilight falls into candle-shine. 



SPRING RAIN 

The cry of the water courses for the songs of the forest 
children, 
The hint of the freshness of springing green where 
the winter drift has lain ; 
A hope of the world-wide spaces in the balm of the 
wind's caresses, 
And deep at the heart of the underworld the joy 
of the roots in rain. 

The shiver of plashing footsteps where the rushes 
drink and tremble, 
The glint of the April-changing sun on the drop of 
leaf -held dew; 
The joy of the home-returning of the wind- winged 
prairie children 
To paths that the grasses bend above and the wild 
things loiter through. 

The strength of the horses plowing in the breath of the 
meadow grasses, 
The subtle sense of the earth astir beneath the 
plowman's feet; 
The hopes of the hills at even ere the twilight lamps 
dissemble, 
The will to be going on and on where the long, long 
highways meet. 

8 



Spring Rain 9 

The world is a world of distance for the feet of the 
wildwood children. 
The rivers would have them follow on, the grasses 
bid them stay. 
The near and the far are passions when the south wind 
breathes upon them 
And all of the rover instincts wake and the joys of 
the dream-free way. 



OUT FROM LYNN 

When I came down the road to Lynn 

The surf was beating loud. 
Across the sea a ship came in, 
Each sail a clinging shroud. 
I stood upon the windy hill, 
The vagrant heart within me still. 
The world was larger to my view, 
That moment, than my boyhood knew. 

When I put out to sea from Lynn 

The tide was dropping down. 
I saw the evening lights begin 
To glint out in the town. 

Straining my eyes across the night, 
I watched them till they vanished quite. 
My father's house, the day before, 
Had seemed as distant as the shore. 

When I was out of sight of Lynn 

I caught the seaman's tread. 
I had a hole to stow me in 
And hard boards for my bed. 

Like one enchanted, through my work, 
I watched the stars out in the murk, 
Above and in Our wake of foam, 
The changeless stars I knew at home. 
10 



Out From Lynn n 

When I go back some day to Lynn, 

I know the street that leads 
To country lanes I loitered in 
Before my manhood's needs. 

I shall not mind the buffets then, 
The earnest give and take of men, 
If someone stands within the door, — 
If someone stands — I ask no more. 



WHEN MY LIFE SLIPS TETHER 

Something kindled when first I knew you, 

Something older than all my years. 
Some strange part of myself breathed through you, 
Came from your eyes and from mine went to you, 
Lived on the breath that the south wind blew you, 

Sang in your voice for my trembling ears. 
You were mine in a past Elysian ; 

I was yours where we once ranged free. 
Here we met by our fate's decision, 

To speak in passing like ships at sea. 

Outward and outward to cloud-capped islands, 

Lifted fair from the tumbling waves, 
Fresh green valleys and purple highlands, 
Almost touching the mist-wreathed sky-lands, 

Outward to lands the south sea laves, 
I was swept in the joy of being, 
Living and doing; but dimly seeing 

How much I was leaving in leaving you. 
Life led onward, blind fate decreeing; 

Heaven and the sea were fair and blue. 

Never a word that your lips had spoken, 
Never a song that your voice had sung 

Came as a kindred cry or token 

Out of a silence else unbroken, 

Never a sigh your heart had wrung. 

12 



When my Life Slips Tether 13 

Over the earth men's thoughts were learning 
To fly in whispers. Some message burning 
With word of an empire's overturning 

Sped on the wires over sea and land; 
But never a lisp of your spirit's yearning 

Made me believe and understand. 

Never a glimpse of your brow's fair whiteness 

Under the massed hair floating free, 
Came with the morning's vestal brightness, 
Sped through the noon air's hovering lightness, 

Trembled over the twilight sea. 
Men were looking with eyes of wonder 
Through stones that earth's secrets burrow under, 
Learning the real for the past's poor blunder, 

Making the false thing clear and true. 
Never the miles that have held asunder 

You and me has a ray pierced through. 

Something kindled when first I knew you, 

Something that came before time and death. 
Now is the hour when my lips would woo you, 
Now is the time when my need calls to you, 
Seeking life's ultimate meaning through you, 
Feeling the bonds of the soul that drew you 

Once to my soul as its life and breath. 
Somewhere again when my life slips tether, 
Glad of the sun in the autumn weather, 

Wandering free in the leafy ways, 
Somewhere again we shall come together 

After the long and loveless days. 



14 When my Life Slips Tether 

Never a stranger to stranger meeting 

Flashes a comradeship like this. 
Somewhere before these hearts were beating, 
Mortal as idle moments fleeting, 

We must have clung and given the kiss. 
Somewhere again with their earth-beat over, 

Heart of my heart, from that old embrace, 
You shall receive me and call me lover, 

There as we tremble face to face. 



BACK FROM THE HOSPITAL 

THE FIRST NIGHT 

This is the face they let me bring you home, 
The face you used to love and used to kiss, 
Calling it beautiful. For that light word 
I lost my soul. Is it a thing for smiles? 
For you, I know — before these cheeks and lips 1 
Had been so marked, you used to say my laugh 
Was lite a sun-burst. Now I dare not smile — 
No, dare not. Hideous, more hideous — 
Youjwould not shrink from any vilest thing 
More surely than the smile you used to call — 
You were a lover once. I was half crazed 
To be so loved, to have such flowers of speech 
Fashioned for me, and now — Oh, you may go, 
May leave me here, a scarred and wretched thing, 
Just as you please. I know I could not be 
More than a ghost beside the banquet board 
Where once, a month ago, if I had gone, 
You would have been as proud as any knight 
Presenting princes to his queen of love. 
There have been women neither young nor fair 
Whom still you would have taken and been glad, 
Because, perhaps, — I knew the time must come 
When I should envy them their wit, their talk, 

15 



16 Back from the Hospital 

Their finer graces of the mind, the heart, 
Such women, women whom I used to see 
With foolish pity. You who told me then 
That being beautiful, no more than that, 
Was all a woman's duty, art, or need, 
You who so dared deceive me, tell me now^ 
What there can be for her who loses all, 
Who starves her mind to nothing, shrivels up 
The better instincts of her heart, and dwarfs 
Her very nature, just because one man 
Tells her be beautiful, be nothing else. 
What then when in a little week, a day 
That beauty that was all slips like a mask 
That hides a death's-head and she looks and sees 
No friend, no lover? Oh, you cannot know 
How horrible, how terrible — I think 
You would not sit there with that dull disgust, 
Half tolerating what I suffer, too, 
Because you soon will laugh with all the gay, 
Who ask but idly for your wife at home. 

It is an hour before you need to dress. 
Give me that hour. Let us turn down the light. 
In the half darkness, am I not the same? 
My voice, the voice you praised is just as low. 
My hands are just as soft to hold your own. 
My eyes — if you could see me all as eyes 
Here in the shadows, if your eyes could smile, — 
I think that they might glow as once they used, 
Seeing the love you gave them. You forget, 



Back from the Hospital 17 

Or would forget, with me forgetting too, 

That what I am you made me. Years ago 

Before my life had felt the touch of yours, 

I dreamed of things, I had some thoughts worth 

while, 
And something of the glory of the world, 
With all God meant that we should be and do, 
Held me at times as in a trance of fear, 
Of fear and joy and wonder and resolve. 
You never knew, of course you could not know; 
But I remember once, a night of stars, 
When the great world was sleeping like a babe, 
We walked, Jerome and I, across a marsh, 
Along a causeway, while the water oozed 
In little puddles, where we saw the heavens 
A strange, sweet beauty in the muddy pools. 
We had been talking — no, that let me keep, 
But I remember, when we reached the end, 
We turned and looked and saw a thousand lights 
There in the city. Something held us both, 
A hush in that immensity of space, 
The deep, still darkness and the souls on souls 
Enwrapped within it, life within a pall; 
And something seemed to catch me, bear me on 
To those great wishes that the saints have felt 
Before the sin and struggle, pain and doubt, 
Through which the human gropes to the divine. 
I think, that night, if he had only dared, — 
Ah, God, if he had said the one great word 
And held me with a little mortal love 



1 8 Back from the Hospital 

To all the immortalities I felt! 
I should not then have flung myself away 
And lost the things I was and might have been 
For this mad life. If you could understand, — 
You do not care that I have empty hands, 
That now, too, I must have an empty heart 
Fed with the husks of kindness only felt 
As something irksome. Going? Are you sure 
You might not stay at home and not be missed? 
I would not have you stay. Go, leave me, go. 
If you can laugh, our common cup of joy 
Is fuller, though the dregs are all my share. 

Of course you would not leave me here alone 
If it were possible for me to go, 
Or even possible for you to stay. 
Why make apologies? Do I not know 
The dull companionship I have to give? 
Besides, I need to think, and I must learn 
To shape a new life for the old I lose. 
I half conceive the part I have to play. 
Because I know we need not talk of love 
After this hour. That somehow makes me free 
To gather up those threads of old intent 
Too doubtfully drawn out and weave again 
A something beautiful, the thing I was, 
The thing I might have been before you came, 
As I dare still believe — and then, and then — 
You will not see, you will not seem to care. 
Some other woman with bold laughing eyes 



Back from the Hospital 19 

And cheeks half red, with blood below the rouge 

And piled hair for the smiles to glow beneath, 

Some woman with a breast as full and warm 

And limbs as roundly splendid and a step 

That springs as freely with as great a joy 

And lips as bravely human with the pulse 

Of singing life — and then these cheeks, these cheeks! 

You ought to pity me. I hate her now. 

She should not dare be beautiful for you 

When I have nothing, I who need so much, 

Because you taught me how to ask and have, 

And now, and now — of course I should not ask 

Or seem to care. How could I with this face? 

Go. There are pretty women dressing too, 

Choosing the jewels for their round white necks 

That you may see them as they pause and pass 

And love them idly, all the evening through 

Forgetting me, as if— There is no hell, 

God could not make a hell beyond to-night 

While I sit waiting in the quiet house 

To catch your step. I should have died, have died 

Rather than never hear you any more 

Tell me how beautiful I look. There are— 

I cannot tell how many — thousands, yes, 

More beautiful, and you will praise them too; 

And I must know it, feel it, every hour 

And curse them every moment, like a fiend 

Shrieking in torments. Oh, these cheeks, these cheeks ! 

I wish — If God could only make you blind, 

You might forget, and I— these poor scarred cheeks! 



20 Back from the Hospital 

No, leave the gas turned down and let me stay 
Here in the darkness. You can face the glow, 
Faultlessly dressed and faultless in yourself. 
It is the darkness brings the truth to light. 
It shuts away so many things untrue, 
So many mockeries, so many shows 
That lure and trick the fancy to our hurt, 
And, after all — I think that makes it clear. 
I needed this, I needed losing you 
To rind the good to which my eyes were blind 
And would have been forever. Leave me, go. 
Pour out your tinkling rill of compliment 
For other women. While I sit and wait, 
Find someone fairer. Let your fancy fly 
In brave disdain of bonds that hurt the flesh. 
Call yourself free, and, so becoming free, 
Kiss the first fresh-lipped girl you meet and dare 
Tell her the lies I could not disbelieve. 
Make her believe them — then — the last hard truth- 
Tell me you kissed her. So I, too, am free, 
And out of freedom I shall dare aspire 
To all I lost in girlhood, all I lost. 
It seems so far away, so wholly lost, 
And nothing left me, nothing. Oh, these cheeks, 
This loneliness, this being so afraid ! 



SONG FOR LABOR DAY 

We are the builders, the makers, 

The ultimate shapers of earth. 
Out of our blood and our sinews 

The joys that shall be must have birth. 
We are the builders, the makers; 

Without us life falls upon dearth. 

We are the hopers, the dreamers. 

We toil and we trust in the years. 
We fashion the fabrics of pleasure 

For those who take toll of our tears. 
We are the hopers, the dreamers; 

We must not fall back upon fears. 

We are the powers, the fulfillers. 

We harness the uttermost lands. 
We thrill to man's passionate fancies, 

Make fact of his burning commands. 
We are the powers, the fulfillers; 

The Destinies throb in our hands. 

We are the wills, the creators. 

We breathe on thejdust of our dreams. 
This is the seed-time of labor; 

To-morrow the purple fruit gleams. 
We are the wills, the creators; 

Dawn breaks on the hills and the streams. 



21 



22 Song for Labor Day 

We are the slaves and the masters. 

We wait till we come to our own. 
We shall be lords of the highways. 

We fashioned them stone by stone. 
We are the slaves and the masters ; 

We bow till we sit on the throne. 



THE SINGER 

In the burst of the song, 

When the singer's heart is free, 
When earth-roving fancies throng 
And the winds go down to sea; 
When words are too vain and idle and speech is too 

pale and cold, 
When thoughts that have flung the bridle dash on over 

' paths of gold, 
When night is a star-strewn splendor and day,is young 

love aglow, m . 

Then song with a voice grown tender, song mad m its 
throbbing flow. _ 

In the burst of the song, 

Eyes glowing and cheeks one fire, 
With a cry from a heart grown strong 
In the sweep of a high desire; 
When the viol joins its fellows and the flutes are 

breathed in tune, 
When cornet and horn and 'cello are knit like love 

in June, 
When a thousand uplifted faces grow rapt on the 

singer's voice, 
Then song with its deep, true graces, song bidding 
the world rejoice. 

23 



24 The Singer 

In the burst of the song, 

When the life of far and near 
Is poured like wine for the throng 
In a pure voice fine and clear, — 
Who knows if the world forever shall spin through 

the grooves of change ? 
Who knows if our best endeavor shall find death's 

further range 
A fast shut door, or the portal to ever new delights? 
Song keeps us an hour immortal; song lifts us up to 
the heights. 

Radiant she stands in the silence, while the sudden 

lights burn low, 
And the violins call beneath her, and Ibefore her, 

row on row, 
Faces on faces leaning breathe out from their eager 

eyes 
A rapture of expectation half flushed with warm 

surprise. 
Sudden as love's first fancy the clear voice rings and 

thrills. 
The victors cry in the triumph the god of battles 

wills. 
Youth walks by the morning hedgerows and sees the 

world abloom. 
The meadows are fresh with sunrise, the air with rich 

perfume. 
Out of the deeps and the distance a thousand hearts 

made one, 



The Singer 25 

From love and despair and losing, look singly toward 

the sun. 
The daybreak comes over Sinai, the night dies out in 

space. 
The world is gladness forever before God's radiant 

face. 
What now is the deathless meaning that mortals may 

never know? 
What matters the strange, far wonder to which 

thought may not go? 
They pass, like a somber twilight that lingers over long 
And then, with a friend at; the keyboard, is lost in 

the burst of the song. 

In the burst of the song, 

When viol and flute and horn 
Are bearing the singer along, 
And wonder with joy is born; 
When mother and maid and lover and stranger and 

lonely youth 
Are drawn till they each discover the palpitant heart 

of truth, 
Are touched with the selfsame splendor of good, 

unnamed, unknown, 
Then song with a cadence tender, on all the free winds 
blown. 



WITH MARJORIE IN APRIL 

Sweetheart here on my shoulder, 

Three years old next June, 
Do you know that the grass is springing, 

That April is coming soon? 
I shall take you by lanes and byways, 

Far off from the pavement noise, 
To a land of strange newwonder 

And a world of strange new joys. 

Sweetheart here on my shoulder, 

I shall find things for your eyes 
To see with a sweet new rapture 

And a rush of glad surprise. 
I shall feel your soft hand tremble, 

I shall hear your baby cry 
Of delight in each new-found treasure 

And the blue of the April sky. 

Sweetheart here on my shoulder, 

,We shall sing on, hand in hand, 
With never a care to question 

Or a wishto understand. 
We shall both be happy, happy, 

The long, long daytime through. 
We shall both be happy, happy, 

With the twilight stars and dew. 



26 



IN THE WORKSHOP 

And here I shut myself from all my kind 
For love of them, God; and while I plan 
By day and night the turning of a wheel, 
The thickness of a rod, the strength and strain 
That falsely matching in the tiniest bar 
May make the hope a sudden thrill of wreck, 
While I devise each day some better shape 
For cam or lever, they pass lightly by, 
Unknowing, happy in their own desires, 
Rejoicing in their own companionships, 
Careless of what they do not understand.^ 

I might have written, painted for their praise, 

Or made the songs that lift a people's joy; 

I might have been a poet, I have felt 

The stirrings of that greatness in my soul. 

I might have known a woman's sweetness mixed 

With all the duller passions of my life, 

And so have saved myself for happiness ; 

But all this I have dared deny my heart 

That I might make a thing of iron and brass 

For men to use, ^a something that shall take 

The weight from burdened shoulders, leave the 

thoughts 
Free for the play of finer fantasies, 
Make every meaner life that plows the muck 

27 



28 In the Workshop 

Of uglier needs be glad in nobler tasks 

Of fairer service, while the fouler toil 

Is left to such dumb servants as are here 

Growing to life and use in this dark room 

I call my workshop. How I crave sometimes 

The flood of summer sunshine and the breath 

Of that free air of park and garden bloom 

That those may have who walk this present world 

And find it fair without a need or thought 

Of nobler beauty shaped for fuller joys 

By toil and patience, love and care like mine. 

But one thing still appalls me as I work. 

Are all my thoughts made grosser by the tasks 

I set myself? I lightly put aside 

The lees of happiness I might have drained, 

But must I turn away from all I am 

And lose myself in these dead, senseless things ? 

Must I, to serve the finer needs of man, 

To free his spirit from the primal curse, 

Take on myself the earthiness and be 

A something worse than angel sunk to brute? 

God, that seems too much. The fellowship 
With those ennobled ones whom I have seen 
In that far future that I hope to shape 

Would be denied me. They might know my hands 
Were strong, but they would never dream them fair. 

It cannot be the curse lights on me so. 

1 shape the iron, but all my fancies rove 



In the Workshop 29 

The happy, busy, crowded thoroughfares. 

For this fine care I spend on every part 

To make my thought work ceaselessly for 

man, 
There shall be sculptors, painters, lords of earth, 
Great poets walking freely all their days, 
Rejoicing in the wonder of the world. 
I shall be of them. I shall see their eyes 
Grown greatly luminous and marvelous 
With new-found splendors of the universe, 
New systems circling with the far-off suns, 
Great thoughts that light our human destinies 
With sudden glory. I shall walk with them 
Through dim-lit woodlands in the summer nights, 
Shall hear the music of the rolling spheres, 
Shall know the wonder of new loves and laws, 
The chemic, biologic, shall be glad 
Of that long vista of the troubled years 
Through which we glimpse the whence and how and 

why 
With that fine frenzy, holier than joy, 
Of those that know. Beside the sunset sea 
They shall be rapt on all the distant lands 
Where other customs rule in other lives, 
The painters who have love for all things fair, 
The singers who have hearts for every joy; 
And I shall be among them, I shall feel 
The rapture of their souls with that great thrill 
That only he who makes a thing can know 
When he has tried it and has found it good. 



30 In the Workshop 

I might have been a poet, — but, indeed, 

I think I am and shall be. Is it not 

To be a poet just to know the worth 

Of all things as they are, as they must be 

Forever and forever? Is he not 

A poet truly, who, because he sees 

The good, the beauty, the unstinted joy 

In something that is not itself a joy 

Or beauty, does it gladly with his soul 

Filled with the good he knows that it shall be? 

What does the poet but see true and far, 

Knowing the seeds of good with subtle skill, 

And knowing so the things to make his joy 

The mad delirium that lesser men 

Must stand agape at? If he shapes, besides, 

The things he sees and makes them true and fair, 

Sweet with the joys of ages yet to be, 

Rich with new passions born of nobler lives 

And finer aspirations looking up 

To possibilities more bravely dreamed — 

It is enough, God, it is enough. 

Let those who will breathe out their hearts in words; 

For me these hands, these tools, this iron and brass. 

In them, my dreams, imaginings, desires; 

Through them, the purposes that live and grow, 

That call men onward to horizons dim 

Where under new-discovered suns and stars 

Their souls shall sing in new antiphonies, 

Where all the gracious bounty of the world 

Shall pour upon them till their hearts are peace. 



ALMA BARBELOW 

Singing, singing, singing, in the starlight or the sun, 
Dawn upon the mountains or the twilight falling 

dun. 
On the level road to yesterday I turn my eyes and 

see 
All the glory ofto-morrow on the face you lift to me. 
Alma, Alma Barbelow, 
That was very long ago. 
Are you singing still and clinging still, like spinners 

in the sun, 
To the gleams that lit the dreams you knit from 
fancies lightly spun? 

Give'me, Alma Barbelow, 
Once again their golden glow. 

Singing, singing, singing, in the rain-beat or the hush, 
Spring upon the treetops or the autumn's dying 

flush. 
In the paths that knew your footsteps while my 

heart, as yours, was young, 
Are there yet some lingering echoes of the wildwood 
joys you sung? 

Alma, Alma Barbelow, 
We are waiting for the snow. 
31 



32 Alma Barbelow 

Are V ou holding yet and folding yet against the last 

eclipse 
Through life's prosiness the rosiness that once was on 
your lips? 

Teach me, Alma Barbelow, 
What I knew once long ago. 

Singing, singing, singing, through the leaf-drift or the 

bloom, 
Friends upon the threshold, or the stars where moun- 
tains loom. 
Are you saved by simple wishes from the unfulfilled 

and lost? 
Do you never feel a wave-lift of the deeps where I 
am tossed?' 

Alma, Alma Barbelow, 
Lead me where your roses blow. 
Could you break your heart and take your part and 

keep the singing clear? 
Could you taste and drink and waste, and think the 
wasted moments dear? 

Bring me, Alma Barbelow, 
Some fresh fountain's overflow. 

Singing, singing, singing, through the simple house- 
hold fret, 

Older than a thousand years when Pharaoh's piles 
were set. 1 

I can never think } t ou sated by the thoughts that 
flood the brain. 



Alma Barbelow 33 

I can never lose the freshness of your meadow-drifting 
strain. 

Alma, Alma Barbelow, 
There's a call would make me go 
Out of Babylon, the rabble on its every lure-flamed 

street, 
To the trysted place, your lifted face, and find the 
journey sweet. 

Somewhere, Alma Barbelow, 
You are singing yet, I know. 
3 



THE HIGHWAYS OF THE NATIONS 

When the mists go up the mountains 

And the winds blow out to sea, 
I shall follow, follow, follow, 

Till I set my fancies free. 
I shall have a restless army 

Felling forests where I go, 
Where the wild things break from covert 

And the giant trees fall low. 

We shall tunnel, tunnel, tunnel, 

Till the way is straight and clear, 
While the joy of life thrills through us 

In the noontide of the year. 
We shall blaze a path straight forward 

Till before our eyes the sea 
Flashes blue and wide and wondrous, 

And I set my fancies free. 

I shall stand and watch them meeting, 

East and West, with alien eyes, 
Till the sudden flame of kinship 

Flashes out in swift surprise. 
Then in all the tremulous laughter, 

In the tears of joy I see 
Where the stranger finds a brother, 

I shall set my fancies free. 
34 



The Highways of the Nations 35 

Oh, the long, long way before me 

Where my heart will soon be gone! 
Oh, that every rose of sunset 

Might at once glow into dawn! 
When the ice has left the rivers 

And the buds are on the tree, 
In the camps of highway makers, 

I shall set my fancies free. 



GYPSYING 

When you and I go gypsying we'll laugh the whole 

day long; 
We'll stop at every cottage gate and thrill our hearts 

with song. 
We'll live the joy of summer skies when hopes are 

well begun. 
When you and I go gypsying we'll travel toward the 

sun. 

We'll use the old, old magic that shall never cease to 

be, 
The charm of love, whose mystic spell is over you and 

me. 
Our hearts will know a rapture fine that time shall 

not outrun. 
When you and I go gypsying we'll travel toward the 

sun. 

With some far, Eastern splendor strange, with some 

unbought delight, 
We'll fill our eager vision as it looks beyond the 

night; 
And still, to feed the fire that burns within our hearts 

as one, 
When you and I go gypsying we'll travel toward the 

sun. 

36 



Gypsying 37 

We'll leave behind us every care and set our way 

afar, 
Beyond the low horizon's verge to some love-lighted 

star. 
We'll dream the dreams of earth no more, a happier 

dream begun. 
When you and I go gypsying we'll travel toward the 

sun. 



SOULS OF SONG 

After the world has tried my eager heart, 
When every sense is burning with the smart 
Of some rebuff, some unattained desire, 
When down to ashes sinks the dwindling fire; 
Here in my chimney-nook to pause with you, 
Brave-hearted poets, all the gay, mad crew 
Who sang and jested, — Let the world go by. 
What are its idols where your fancies fly? 
Yours is a vintage for the soul to quaff 
And never drain the cup. The ringing laugh 
Bubbling above the wine of life you pour 
Need never fail ; its more still grows to more 
For every lip. All things besides may pass, 
But this shall sparkle still within the glass, 
Immortal as the gods. I drink and lose 
All memory of what my fates refuse. 

Helen? Pendragon? What shall be to-night 
The tale, the song, to which you now invite? 
It cannot matter. Joy is all your part. 
I shall be young again, a poet's heart 
Thrilling within me. Care, defeat, good-bye. 
The vapor wreathes are blue in the blue sky. 
The winds are blowing from some land of flowers. 
O souls of song, these joys are ours, are ours. 



38 



YIELDING THE QUEST 

" I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an 
altitudo." 

Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. 

The hour was after midnight, and we sat, 
Hearing the dying clangor of the bells 

That let the old year pass. Then Frawley rose 
And drew a book down from the shelves and flat 
Spread the leaves open. All of them were spells 
To lure the spirit out of its repose 
To worlds where other breath of being blows. 

"Here are the words," he said, "that set my feet 
On the undying quest. 'I love to lose 
Myself in a mystery.' How could I here, 
Where every moment flies on wings more fleet, 
How could I, from the things we daily use 
To dull the passions, leap up in the clear 
Serene of heaven and not feel earth too near? 

"Not here, not here. We touch the naked fact. 
Somewhere, in synagogue, church, temple, mosque, 
On lonely heights where burn the Magian fires, 
The thing might be. I took the lure and packed 
My travel scrip, as in some dim kiosk 

A prince may spurn the world and its desires 
And fast and pray, to lift him from its mires." 

39 



40 Yielding the Quest 

He paused and stood before the logs, whose flame 
Leaped up the chimney, and I turned and bent 
Over a drawer of letters. "Here, " I said, 
"Are things that made me wonder, when they came. 
One was all fire. Another seemed so spent 

I might have dreamed the man you were was 

dead 
And some cold ghost penned nothings in your 
stead." 

"Indeed, indeed, I was a ghost at times, 
Feeling the very earth slip under me, 

And then again, — " He made some sparks fly 
up 
Out of thejogs and listened to the chimes 
That rang the new year in. " My blood runs free 
Into new life, once more to come and sup 
At a friend's table, drink from a friend's cup. 

■ ' Mine were long, lonely vigils by the fanes 
Where priests kept ward above some dwindling fire, 
Watching the worshipers with heads bent low 
Brooding upon earth's losses and her gains, 

While up from earth there sprang the old desire, 
Heaven and its mysteries, the roseate glow 
Of something wisdom cannot dare to know. 

"Always and always, — like a man who finds 
Crystals that vainly pledge the lure of gold 
And tosses them aside and passes by, 



Yielding the Quest 41 

Braving the heights where the cold sunlight blinds, 
Still with his hammer testing every fold 
Of jutting rocks, until against the sky 
No higher point gives promise to the eye. 

"Always and always, so I pushed the quest- 
Altars before the Virgin, the Black Stone 

Worshiped at Mecca, crumbling Indian shrines, 
Confucian rites, the temples where a crest 
Proclaims Mikado and his ancient throne, 
A wayside chapel overhung with vines 
Sheltered and quiet in the Appenines. 

"On, on I passed, like some storm-beaten bark 
Making for harbor with her compass lost, 
Taking the star-shine on a lift of sea 
For lights that are the entry's guiding mark, 
Tacking and turning, and at daybreak tossed 
Still on a waste of waters stretching free, 
Nothing but tumbling waves on wind and lee. 

"On, on I pushed, and here at last I rest 

Beside your blazing hearth with empty hands. 
Never an eaglet's feather from the blue 
Dropped at my feet. The East may teach the West, 
But from the sacred places of all lands 

I bring you nothing that my soul calls new, 
Nothing more beautifully and nobly true." 

He dropped into a chair and turned his face 
So that the firelight caught his tremulous lips 



42 Yielding the Quest 

And left the deep eye dark. "You cannot mean 
That you have tracked out every hiding place 
Of that diviner hope whose yearning whips 

Man to the heights where waits him the unseen, 
And that no spark flashed down to our terrene?" 

"Yes, yes, " he cried. "No revelations more 
Wait undiscovered in some land remote. 
No mystery can touch us with its awe, 
Shining from heaven on some distant shore. 
We have exhausted every singing note, 
Pan and Apollo and the tabled law 
And God in the burning bush that Moses saw. 

"At last, at last, earth's bounds have been explored. 
Once when the old gods fled a new god came, 
With garlands on his head, or in his feet 
Marks of the nails, or in his hand a sword. 
A cry went up. Men's'thoughts were sudden flame. 
They took the pilgrim path and found it sweet. 
No more, no more! We walk the well paved 
street." 

He paused and turned the book once in his hand, 
With brooding love as for a thing whose loss 

Burned in his heart. "The old romance is gone. 
There is no glamor where we understand. 

Our shield is but a shield. No glittering boss 
Makes it a splendor when the golden dawn 
Flings down her orient glow, night's veil with- 
drawn. 



Yielding the Quest 43 

"And yet, once more, — what would I give to be 
A boy with eyes upon some wonder- world ! 
Looking across a valley's tangled green 
To purple peaks whose tops I cannot see, 
Jagged and torn as if by giants hurled 
Down from the empyrean's high serene, 
Mixed with the clouds, heaven's drifting, haunt- 
ing screen. 

"To be a boy with eyes for all things fair, 

Letting my boat slip down some river's mouth, 
Spreading her single sail against the breeze, 
Feeling the soft wind blowing on my hair, 
Hearing the ripples wash and turning south 
Under a warmer sun toward wider seas, 
Somewhere before me the Hesperides ! 

"To be a boy with everything to dare, 
All hopes to venture and all joys to win ! 
Seeing a net of lace along the sky 
When the moon passes and the stars are there 
Almost as near as fireflies drifting in 
Across the quiet when the winds go by 
And peace itself must tremble in a sigh. 

"No more, no more! The spirit paths are closed 
Into a circle. Every inn is known. 

Others are seated with you, pay the fee, 
Eat or reject and take the road proposed, 

Dreaming no dreams of winds from Dephi blown. 
No more, no more! No wildwood ways we see. 
I follow hundreds; hundreds follow me." 



44 Yielding the Quest 

We sat a moment while the watch-night ring 
Of steps upon the pavement echoed home. 
"I find it pleasant by this dying glow 
To hear your voice, " I said. "The world may 
swing 
Back on its course until we beat the foanT 
Of stranger seas than those of long ago, 
And round us more tempestuous winds may 
blow." 

" No more, no more, " he echoed. "This remains: 
To sit and watch the long procession pass, 

Man and his fancies, bound he knows not where, 
Having no certain guerdon for his pains. 
I too might go. Some lover with his lass 

Would draw me out to breathe the spring-night 

air. 
No more, — and yet — a rose flames in her hair." 



THE PRAIRIE 

My soul is out on the prairie where the eye may 

sweep afar 
From gold of the burnished heavens to the silver 
evening star. 
I am not fenced by human eyes 
That shut me in from nature's guise, 
To shroud me in convention, make my spirit one with 
those 
That pace some narrow close. 
The grass in its tangled sweetness, 
The sky in its wide completeness, 
The breath of the wind that strays and tarries, 
The misty line where the earth hue marries 
The blue of heaven; these suffice 
To give to my raptured spirit the thrilling of surprise 
And laughter to mine eyes. 

However long the prairie swells may wait for heaven's 

tears 
To fall with loving tenderness for blight and dearth 
of years, 
The gentian springs when first she smiles, 
The wind-flower wakens, yellow isles 
Of goldenrod start up between 
The billowy reaches of sun-kissed green. 

45 



46 The Prairie 

The soul of the prairie knows no longer 
The ache of waiting. A passion stronger 
Than life or loving or hero-burning 
Or warm caressing of mother-yearning, 
Grows subtly sweet in the wind and weather, 
In wooing touch of the swan's dropped feather; 

And over the sea of the prairie lightly the heart looks 
far away 

For sails to show in the offing through the sunset 
gates of day. 

The twilight fades on the prairie, the night comes 

wide and far. 
The hush of the soft wind deepens in the light of one 

pale star, 
And faintly, sweetly, slowly, through infinitudes of 

{space, 
New-glowing out of darkness like the love of some 

rapt face, 
Flames out the sudden brightness of the gloom-dis- 
covered suns, 
And awe and rapture quicken to a hope that hope 

outruns. 
The vastness that is time and space and love broods 

warm and near. 
The silence is a glory, and the dark is crystal-clear. 

There is joy and strength in the prairie with its wild 

and steadfast mood. 
The brown hills hide their tenderness, like a maiden 

not yet wooed, 



The Prairie 47 

And blossom and life and color are but waiting for 

the rain 
To thrill to the kiss of summer after cold and drouth 
and pain; 
To sway as the wind blows over, 
Half won by_ the light-heart rover, 
To lift, in the sun and the rain and dew, 
Unwavering eyes to the star-deep blue, 
To make sweet food for the wild deer straying 
And grassy paths for the rabbits playing, 
To hear the ring-dove's wailing flight, 
The wolf's long howl through the silent night, 
And low and clear 
And sweet and near, 
The plash of the river winding slow 
By sedgy banks where the willows grow, 
And, soft as the murmur of swarming bees, 
The sigh of wind-bowed trees. 



The sun and the rain of April's love shall touch the 

hills some day, 
And cold and drouth of the burdened year shall 

blossom into May. 
The wind-swept perfumes all day long shall beat from 

the land of balm ; 
Wide-arching heavens shall compass earth with deep 

on deep of calm. 
The passion of the prairie shall make one of near and 

far 



48 The Prairie 

From the wet, green grass-clothed reaches to the 
dim horizon bar, 

Where earth and heaven are met and mixed in ame- 
thystine light, 

The flush of morning purpled with the glory of the 
night. 



THE FIRE DANCER 

A riot of colors, the orient splendor of dawn. 
The grace of a face round and sweet in its meshings of 

lace 
Where pearly and white falls the opaline light, till the 

space 
Is full of the filmy and fragrant effulgence of flowers 
Where rose petals close through the languorous lapse 

of the hours, 
And fancies are glances that smile in the eyes and 

are gone. 

Then lowly and slowly, 
Like winds drugged with moly, 
Or blown over meadows of asphodel bloom 
Where hyacinths pour out their heavy perfume, 
The violins breathe, and the billowy clouds touched 

with fire 
Break out into butterfly wings, gaudy sapphire and 

rose, 
Brave purples and amethysts lucent as dawn in the 

sky, 
When up, like a cup that is pouring the wine of 

desire, 
The sun rises over the hills and the singers go by 
4 49 



50 The Fire Dancer 

With hymns to Aurora, whose limbs catch the hues, 

where she goes, 
Of lily and rose, and the form, sweetly rounded and 

warm, 
Of soft, waxy petals that hide in the leaves from the 

storm. 

Then swaying and lithe, as a spirit too blithe for the 

earth, 
Like webs of the spider the winds toss and turn in the 

sun, 
While over the network the delicate shimmerings 

run, 
As bright, iridescent, and strangely canescent as fire 
That plays in the blaze where a diamond or opal has 

birth, 
She glides on the tides of the music that thrills with 
desire. 

She sways as the fronds 
Of the fern that responds 
To the kiss of that rifler 
Of sweets, that gay trifler, 
The South Wind. Her robes, soft and fine, 
Drift out on the air and then twine 
In mazes of happy inclosure 
About her fair figure's exposure, 
Protecting and draping its exquisite shaping 
With luminous fold upon fold of spun gold 
That trembles and faintly dissembles, escaping 
Again in a flutter of sunshine unrolled, 



The Fire Dancer 5* 

Like noonday ablaze on the grass, of the summer at 

height. , 

Then lightly as winds that blow ripplmgly over the 

wheat .. . 

That bends as if yielding itself to a lover s delight 
And offering grace for caresses unspeakably sweet, 
She flings her spread wings to the full of their emerald 

expanse . ■ . , , 

And turns where the heart of joy burns in the swirl of 

the dance. 



WHITHER AWAY 

This is the road that you all must take, 

Whither away so far. 
Seek what you will and your heart shall break, 

A glowworm or a star. 
After it all but a swirling wake 

Across the harbor bar. 

These are the things that you all have planned, 

Whether to make or mar, 
Love and the touch of a kindred hand, 

Fame and the conqueror's car. 
After it all but your boat unmanned 

Across the harbor bar. 

This is the thing that you all must know, 

Travel you near or far; 
Yours are the moments before they go, 

Which shall be, not which are. 
After it all but the lights burnt low 

Across the harbor bar. 



52 



THE WATER IN THE TURBINE 

Rain, rain in the hills! 

Till the flowers come out with the sun 
Rain till the lake in the mountain fills 
And over its edge the freshness spills 

And the spring-glad rivers run! 

The waters flow to the turbine ceaselessly day by 

From dark cool deeps of the hillside, from pools 

where the rushes sway. _ 
The waters flow to the turbine; it gathers from near 

and far A 

The multiform powers of the tempest, of earth and ot 

sun and star. 

Rain, rain on the slopes! 

Where the cattle stand deep in the grass. 
Rain till the soul of the black earth gropes 
Through root and leaf to its summer hopes. 
Rain till the wild things, bird and bee, 
Lizard and squirrel on rock and tree, 
With leap and flutter and panting cry, 
With whisk of the tail and turn of the eye, 
Thrill as the fresh winds pass. 
53 



54 The Water in the Turbine 

The waters bring to the turbine out of the rain-swept 

lands 
The tremor of life and being for thousands of busy 

hands, 
The buzz and whir of the spindles, the beauty that 

grows in the loom, 
The manifold uses and splendors earth piles where her 

cities bloom. 

Rain, rain on the face! 

While the horses tug in the mire. 
Rain while the dark's last lonely grace 
Of sunset glimmer is lost in space ! 

Rain while the eyes through the heavy night, 
Half -blinded, search for the window light 
Where, after the wet and the numbing chill, 
Love's watchful care must be shining still, 
Where flames the rosy fire. 

The waters bring to the turbine out of the heart of the 

hills 
The beautiful glow of the city, passions and pleasures 

and wills 
Throbbing and mingling and changing, swift as the 

thrill of desire, 
Strange with the infinite wonder of light on the wings 

of the wire. 

Rain, rain on the snows ! 

When the winter dissolves in May, 
When the tender hues of the buds unclose, 



The Water in the Turbine 55 

The green of the leaves and the red of the rose, 
And over it all and far away 
The clear deep blue where the white clouds 
stray, 
And the warm wind comes and goes. 

The waters bring to the turbine ceaselessly day by 

day 

The gleam of my lady's diamonds under the storm- 
borne ray, 

Her dress in its silken shimmer, the warmth of her 

cheeks and eyes 
Where, lit by the wire's far magic, the wild-rose 
color flies. 

Rain, rain on the mouth! 

When the fever burns like fire. . 
Rain with its coolness in heat and drouth! 
Rain of kisses when winds breathe south! 
Rain till the sweet earth stretches green 
Where the maiden waits at her door unseen, 
Her lips a rose for the heart's desire, 
For love to touch with fire! 



ISPAHAN 

There are roads from dawn to sunset through the 
valleys of Kashmir. 

I should like to watch the ships come down from Cadiz 
to Tangier. 

When the awkward-moving camels take their cum- 
brous loads and start 

From Damascus to Palmyra I must follow in my 
heart; 

Yet these fancies lure me idly, as a face whose smile is 
wan, 

For the world is all a desert till you come to Ispahan. 

There the women at the fountain talk and loiter in the 

sun, 
On their lips old Omar's verses tasting pleasures as 

they run. 
There the night is cool with fragrance and the quiet 

day slips by 
Like a pageant of illusion compassed in an arch of 

sky. 
I shall take the road some morning through Tabriz 

and Teheran, 
Passing far across the desert till I come to Ispahan. 

56 



Ispahan 57 

Life and death there throb with mystery, beat with 
human yearnings still. 

I shall feel no press of knowledge making truth the 
germ of ill. 

There they listen to the Sufis while the purple evening 
falls, 

And the distant line of camels ends the journey at the 
walls. 

All the shows of things are idle till I leave the Hama- 
dan 

On my way across the desert to the domes of Ispa- 
han. 



. STORIES 

When we listened in the firelight while the shadows 
leaped in flame, 

While our hearts were mounting raptures and the 
things we lived seemed tame, 

How we followed, followed, followed through the 
story-teller's gate 

To the land of What-May-Happen where the wonder- 
workers wait! 

How we listened, listened, listened, till the embers 
faded cold 

And we heard the night wind sweeping like a ghost 
across the wold. 

How we listened — I remember how your face warmed 

through the glow. 
For the moment you were standing where the turbid 

waters flow, 
Nile in flood, and over yonder Cleopatra breathing 

warm, 
Like a silver moon of beauty when the battle breaks in 

storm. 
How we listened, dreamed and listened! Was it 

Antony that night, 
Or was yours the heart of Cassar leading Rome's 

imperial might? 

58 



Stories 59 

How we listened, — after nightfall we could leave the 
world we knew 

For the land of Ever-Changing under skies of Always- 
Blue. 

There a scarf might touch your shoulder tossed from 
Egypt's languorous hand. 

There the slave of drudging duty was the captain in 
command. 

How we listened, dreamed and listened, till the call 
should come to start 

Through the open doors of sunrise to the highways 
of the heart. 

How we listened, — Some November when the year 

has passed its bloom, 
With the firelight's soft illusions in a dance about the 

room, 
When we sit once more together, and the old again is 

new 
With the dear, immortal stories, while the flames leap 

up the flue, 
We shall listen, dream and listen, with the whistling 

wind blown high, 
Like a ghost of things remembered, like a passion and 

a cry. 



IN RECOMPENSE 

Sullen, sullen are the faces 
In earth's dark and silent places, 
When the word rings in a cry: 
"God is with us, God most high"; 
And a light comes like a gleam 
Of the starlight on a stream 
Over which the willows lace 
In a network veiling space, 
In a curtain darkly vernal 
Drawn across the far eternal. 

Weary, weary are the toilers 
At the tasks set by the spoilers. 
Is he with them, God most high? 
Do we think it, you and I, 
As we watch them day by day 
Where they plod the endless way? 
Do we see beyond the night 
Heaven itself a place of light" 
Opening wide a shining portal 
To the dream of life immortal? 

Burdened, burdened are the shoulders 
With their loads, the faint spark smoulders 
To a fire that seems to die 
60 



In Recompense 61 

In its hope of God most high. 
Have we made their lips grow pale? 
Has our wisdom made theirs fail ? 
Have we smiled because their need 
Asked a more than earthly meed ? 
Have we robbed them, flesh and spirit, 
Of the things they should inherit? 

Helpless, helpless are the workers 
In the hands of us, the shirkers. 
Shall we give them for their loss 
Something more than gold, the dross? 
Still they need the light divine; 
It must be your love and mine. 
God shall quicken out of dust. 
Fellowship shall be their trust. 
In earth's dark and silent places 
They shall walk with lifted faces. 



THE VIOLIN 

Laughing you cry to me. Throbbing with splendor 

The sun brings up the day. 
Soft are your whisperings. Hazy and tender 
The night mists drift away. 

Slowly, caressingly, 
Idly, confessingly 
Trembles my hand on the string. 
Dreamily, musingly, 
Swiftly, confusingly 
All your soul thrills as you sing. 
So in your Italy, summer delighting you, 
Life was a rapture of longing inviting you, 
Making you human with vagrant excesses, 
Making you tender for woman's caresses, 
Making you vibrant with feelings that live again, 
Making you glad in a joy you can give again. 
Over you now 
Throbbingly bow 
Palpitant sympathies flashed as a fire from the striking 

of emeries, 
Hatreds and torturings clashed from the swift-flying 

laughter of Italy, 
Passions of happiness swept with the stream of your 
refluent memories, 

62 



The Violin 63 

Joy of the dancers, adept in an opulent speech glancing 

wittily. 
Strange, it is strange, but I feel it; you take me 

again 
Over strange pathways and into the hearts of strange 

men. 
You are the soul of their souls, for they bowed their 

heads low, 
Giving their ears to your breast as their hands to the 

bow. 
You are the heart of their hearts, and I feel the strange 

thrill 
Deep in the pulse of their ecstasy calling me still. 

Trembling you answer me. Dreamily distant 

The reapers bind the sheaves. 
In through the window comes, idly persistent,... 
The lisp and rain of leaves. 

Singingly, sobbingly, 
Ringmgly, throbbingly, 
Surges the swell and the flow, 

Loudly and thrillingly, 
Softly and stillingly, 
Under the touch of the bow. 
You, who were shaped by the master so cunningly, 
Formed to make melody ripple so runningly, 
Slept with a beggar and burned with his pain, 
Sighed with the sting of a lover's disdain, 
Felt on your neck the firm hand of a king, 
Heard the wild-echoing battle-cry ring. 



64 The Violin 

Now on my breast 
Vibrant you rest, 
Living it over and telling it over and making me know 

it again, 
Drawing the heart of my passion apart from the 

commonplace passions of men. 
Joys of the waifs who have loved you and sung to 

you, 
Griefs of the strong who have sought you and clung to 

you 
Answer my palpitant will in your strings, 
Make my voice dumb with ineffable things. 

So you have lived, a Cremona, a pauper, a prince, 
Loved and forgotten, wept over. These time-stains 

evince 
Passions that struck to the heart, that you cannot 

forget, 
Mellowed and sweetened by time, but immutable 

yet. 
So you have learned from the chance and the change 

you have known, 
Not to be worn by the years, but to make them your 

own. 
So you are prodigal, giving and giving again, 
Still growing richer in all the sweet fancies of men. 
So you are tender forever, and impulses swarm 
Out of the heart of your memories, pulsing and warm. 



BREAKING THE ROAD 

With the captain's eye on the compass and the cap- 
tain's hand on the wheel, 
They sailed from the port of Palos till they felt their 

senses reel, 
Till the stars seemed the devil's torches aflame on the 

road to hell, 
And only the heart of the captain still dreamed that all 

was well; 
But they kept the sails full-bellied to the winds that 

drove them west. 
Not theirs was the home-returning, not theirs was the 

dream-led quest, 
For the high-souled sons of the morning who seek the 

sea's[far spoil 
Need the true, unselfish service of the nameless sons of 

toil. 

With the captain's eye on the compass while the murky 

night came down, 
They' drove through the waves and the wind-spume 

over deeps where a world might drown, 
Till a light sprang out of the darkness and a cry leaped 

up to their lips, 
s 65 



66 Breaking the Road 

And the heart of the dullest seaman grew mad, as in 

some eclipse, 
When the wonder of earth's great shadow thrown 

darkening across the moon 
Is as sweet as the sunset splendor of a rose-breathed 

night in June; 
But the crew, with their homesick hunger and their 

hopeless toil with the sails, — 
For them is the end full guerdon, a torch-light that 

flares and pales? 

One man with the breath of a runner cries out for the 

untrod road. 
The sledges and men are gathered, and the dogs shall 

carry the load. 
The whips are cracked, and the lashings set forward 

the eager pack; 
But only the one who drives them is praised when they 

bring him back. 
Ah, forgotten shall be the heroes who answer another's 

call. 
They are servitors, dumb, if loyal, to be nothingness 

one and all; 
But the roads cannot be broken except through the 

helping hands 
Of the nameless, unthanked toilers who do but their 

lord's commands. 



CONVALESCENCE 

I know you have forgiven me, sweetheart, 
But see; I bring you nothing, empty hands 
That should have been so full, that were so full. 
Perhaps we can be brave and happy still. 
We used to dream of books and love and song; 
I wooed your heart with stories of great thoughts 
On which our souls should feed— I know, I know; 
We have outlived these passions of our youth. 
I could not ask you to be satisfied 
So easily. We were such children then, 
And yet to be just children half a day — 
Why, they might have it all— and still, you know, 
I've spent my soul to get it, all these years 
Piling it up, lands, houses, yellow gold, 
This stately mansion of your happiness— 
You cannot give it up? Dear heart, you must. 
It is all gone, all gone, both yours and mine, 
And somehow it was all so hard to get, 
So hard, so long— I could not, if I would— 
After this week when I am strong again, 
When I can leave my bed and live, — perhaps, — 
Then I shall never see you sitting there, 
Never again with that brave smile of peace 

67 



68 Convalescence 

Framed in the glory of the pictured wall. 
I think I never knew life held so much 
Until I set you in these splendid rooms, 
And yet you always will be beautiful. 

I lie here wondering half the afternoon 
Whether the sober richness where you sit, 
Mahogany behind your head and hair 
And back of that the shadows strange and dim 
Before the Rembrandt that we found in France, 
I wonder whether all of this I bring 
Is more than just the spray of apple bloom 
You held before your face, half lost in dreams 
That made a passion of your musing eyes. 

You have forgotten? So we both forget, 
One this, one that, and so our lives are shut 
Out of the all we lived and dreamed and felt, 
The all we never can make ours again 
Alike together. This alone is real, 
This table where your hand rests lingeringly, 
This spoil of some old castle sacked in Spain, 
This cabinet that treasured secrets once 
That might have cost a duchess name and life. 
These are the things we live for. 

Do you hear? 
The maid is packing up the silver now 
For them to take away. Oh, God, great God — 
Is it so strange that I should call on God? 



Convalescence 69 

There must be something real. If all of this 
That seemed to make our lives so wonderful 
Can be as nothing, then the thoughts that cling 
About our memories must be real instead. 

Let us go back and trust them. Shall we, dear? 
We should be safe against disaster then. 
They were so gracious to us once, so kind, 
So tender past the things we dream of now, 
So like the womanhood you were and are, 
Calm and reposeful, lulling as a song 
Heard by the fireside when we touch the latch 
And hold ourselves and listen. 

False, dear, false? 
Perhaps they were, perhaps they were. Who cares? 
I could believe them gladly, every one, 
And rest my heart upon them all day long, 
If you believed them too. You never can? 
God pity us and our poor barren lives. 
I took them from you, I? I know I did. 
I should not dare reproach you, if I wished; 
But what then shall we do, dear, you and I? 
What shall we do? How shall I make you glad 
So that you put your hands in mine each night 
Just as you always have, a little tired 
Because the day has brought your heart so much, 
But always happy? Can you — can you still 
Be happy? When you lose — I know too well 
How we shall tire each other with regrets — 



70 Convalescence 

And then to see you growing worn and old — 
How can I keep you beautiful and young? 
What shall I clasp around your neck and arms? 
How shall you seem yourself in some bare room? 
No pictures on the walls, no mellowed light 
Gleaming from polished woods and sheeny silk 
Until the air itself seems light and shade 
Diaphanous as veils a goddess wears — 
And you, my goddess — we should better die 
Than think of things our hands can never touch, 
Than dream of things our eyes can never see, 
Than fancy things our hearts can never feel. 
This is a world of things, hard, senseless things, 
A world of senses to give things their worth, 
To revel in them, to live, live, and live, 
And then to lose them, oh, great God, and die. 

I hear the doctor's ring, I think. Go down. 
Tell him that I am better, almost well, 
That he must give me strength, more strength and 

more 
Until I win it back, these very rooms 
For you to sit in smiling — yes, my dear. 
I shall be quiet while your hand rests so 
Just like a kiss itself upon my cheek. 
Hot are they? But your hand can make them cool; 
And then go down and talk with him yourself 
Before the maid can bring him. He must know 
How much, how very much I have to do, 
And life so short, oh, life with you so short. 



THE POWER HOUSE 

Here in the heart of the many-voiced tumult that only 

the city knows, 
I shovel the coal to the ravenous furnace that trembles 

and roars and glows 
With heat like the torture of hell upflaming, to blacken 

and burn and brand. 
My breath is the dust of earth's long decayings; I 

shrivel in eye and hand. 

Out of the stores of the uttermost ages dug up from the 

deep of the mine, 
I shape the new joys of the pulsating present, ecstatic, 

aspiring, divine. 
Hour after hour through the flare of the furnace my 

heart hears the dynamos sing. 
Day after day through the surge of the city my spirit 

goes out on the wing. 

Hundreds and thousands in cottage and workshop 

must feel that they share in the harm, 
If here in the power house the fire becomes ashes 

because the strength fails in my arm, 
If under the wires I make living and human no mother 

rides home in the night, 
No fathers bears back the day's wage to the children, 

no daughter comes bringing delight. 

7i 



72 The Power House 

Grimy, unfit for the eyes of my fellows, thinking my 
thoughts alone, 

I thrill with the wonder of measureless kinship, myriads 
bone of my bone. 

Joys and ambitions and infinite yearnings and thwart- 
ings and helpless despair 

Flash up in the coal of my fireman's shovel to sym- 
pathies warm in the glare. 

Here, though I seem but a slave of the furnace, I know 

myself part of my kind ; 
Machinists, inventors, the consecrate dreamers that 

lifted me out of the hind 
Have set my pulse thrilling with instincts and passions 

more affluent, human and strong, 
Have made me delight in the fullness of being, in 

fellowships happy as song. 

This is the heart of the many- voiced tumult that only 

the city knows. 
I feel the red glare and my soul is exultant wherever 

the heart-beat goes. 
So in the grime and the heat and the labor, living the 

life of my kind, 
I lift myself out of the dumb and despairing, the 

brutish, unfeeling and blind 



AS THE WINDS FLIT 

THATjlay your laugh came down the wind 

I turned my head to hear. 
Beyond the bend the willows thinned, 

The sky was blue and clear. 

The scent of rain was on the wind; 

The apple blooms dropped down. 
I watched you as you turned and pinned 

A spray against your gown. 

And still elusive as the wind 
That fleets we know not where, 

Your smile, with mine a moment twinned, 
The next was gone in air. 

Then in a moment on the wind 

I lost you, like a bird 
Soaring where doubts are never dinned, 

Where plaints are never heard. 

So slipped the hour with changing wind, 
Joy clasping hands with pain, 

Futile as something youth has sinned, 
Baffling as wind and rain. 



73 



AGLAVAINE 

Aglavaine came to the inn. 

They gave him the foulest room. 
He, with a heart to win 

Love like the rose for bloom, 
Slept with the rustling straw for bed 
And cob webbed rafters overhead. 

Aglavaine's red-faced host 

Kept revel all night long. 
The bar-maid was their toast, 
The devil's flings their song. 
Still through the noise he heard the leaves 
Tossed in the wind against the eaves. 

Aglavaine heard the choir 

Chant in the church unseen; 
Then, with a heart of fire 

For beauty fine and clean, 
Ate where a clown might loathe to dine, 
While all his fellows reeled with wine. 

Aglavaine came to the inn. 

Short was their speech and curt. 
He of the tender chin, 

Lonely and worn and hurt, 
Saw through his window-round of sky 
God's pageantry of stars go by. 
74 



Aglavaine 75 

Aglavaine sang in the sun, 

Taking the morning road. 
His was the course begun, 
His but the firstling load. 
They travel far and sup with sin 
Who find good quarters at an inn. 



FACING THE VERDICT 

The court was crowded, and a murmur ran 
From seat to seat, and then, when quiet fell, 
Out of the hush the prisoner rose and stood, 
Eyeing the jury. His was not a face 
On which the criminal was written large. 
A luminous softness breathed upon the lines 
Where all his sufferings hardened, and a light 
Brightened his eyes, half rapture and half rage. 
He spoke and silence deepened, while the rush 
Of changing passions quivered on his lips. 

". . . Then someone spoke to me. I turned and 
asked 
The ceaseless question : ' Who and what is God ? 
Have any seen him or has no one dared 
Look in his face? I do not ask in vain 
Like some mad trifler. I must really know.' 

"The day was clear October. Where we stood 
Three things were in my eyes, the happy folk 
Crowding to church, all in their best attire, . 
The sea with ships that seemed as still as heaven 
While the waves beat and tried to drag them down, 
And in the alley, ragged, dirty, dwarfed, 

76 



Facing the Verdict 77 

Two children fighting for a bit of bone 

Some dog had dropped and left. That very hour 

Had come the word that cursed me, put me far 

Out of my paradise of fond deceits, 

Betrayed and laughed at, made a name of scorn. 

I cried for someone, something, for some strength 

To wrestle with and hold me. No one came. 

Then while I panted down the narrow streets 

Where people pass you thick as circus crowds 

Eyeing the bears and lions cage by cage, — 

God, how they stared ! I could have dragged them all 

Down in the gutter and gone laughing on. 

Then while I almost ran I saw the sea 

And paused, half staggering in a sudden thought. 

" I never asked him why he spoke or more 
Than that one question. I remember still 
How well I studied, measured him, made sure 
How much his word might be a word to trust. 
His eyes grew grave, and in their depths they smiled, 
As if some secret of the universe 
Had made him calm forever. Then I knew 
He would not lie or waver. So he said: 

'"God is both you and I, the potencies 
Of good to conquer evil pushing man 
On to his best and highest, beating down 
The grosser instincts and the grosser lives 
That cumber earth. He is no far-off brain 
Or form or spirit like a larger man, 



78 Facing the Verdict 

Something outside the world. In you and me, 

God is the finer passions we attain, 

The larger outlook that we teach men's eyes, 

The battlings with the brute we carry through, 

The slow emergence as the centuries pass 

Of those perfections that are man's true end. 

God is a creature of our best intents, 

Born of the things we love, the things we hate, 

Set in the heavens like the Northern star 

To guide our seaman's course without mishap, 

A nothingness, and yet man's all in all.' 

"I heard him with a brain that understood 
Only a little of the whole he meant. 
'The battlings with the brute we carry through.' 
The phrase kept sounding, sounding in my ears 
Until the rest was clearer. Then I knew 
How close it came to the mad burst of rage 
That drove me to the thing I had to do. 
I did and do believe him, every word. 
There is no God holding the scales of right, 
Blasting the sinner in the hour of sin, 
Working his justice in the lives of men. 
This is the truth of it, I show you God: . 
1 The battlings with the brute we carry through, ' 
And so I show you too why every day 
I say quite gladly that I killed the man 
And her, the woman who had been my wife. 
I know the world is sweeter since that hour, 
And I shall die and feel that God in me 



Facing the Verdict 79 

Has touched the truth; his truth, in one sure deed, 
One battling with the brute I carried through. 

"Do with me as you will, but give me time, 
A week, a month, to find the man once more, 
To question him and see the warm smile play- 
Over his face as if his life were peace. 
I have no fears. I am at one with God. 
This thing I did is very God himself. 
I am quite sure of that, but thoughts and thoughts 
Crowd on me in an avalanche. I see 
How terrible, how wonderful is man, 
Changing the world in thinking a new thing, 
Taking the place of God and being God 
Through every grappling with that baser part 
That drags him in the devil-smirching mire. 
I should, perhaps, have had the strength to stay 
The murder passion in me till I climbed 
Out of my murkiest and found my best. 
The God I used to curse comes back sometimes 
And cries his old command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' 
But well I know, if I could hear him speak, 
In that slow voice with the untroubled smile, 
The man I tell you of, I should not care 
Now or forever. I should feel myself 
Bound to eternity and all high things 
Beyond your power to change, and yet, I say, 
Do with me as you will. The deed is done. 
I had the joy of it. I felt my hands 
Tighten about his throat. One foul thing passed 



80 Facing the Verdict 

On into nothingness, and you may now 
Do with me as you will. I too must pass, 
While happier men and braver hopes abide." 

He paused, and once again his slow eye ran 
Over the twelve true men who weighed each word 
And shaped the verdict. Then the judge gave charge 
That they should answer on the evidence, 
Holding the sacredness of law supreme 
Above the throbbing passions. Justice rules, 
Not in the musings of a single breast, 
But in the gathered counselings where men draw 
Wisdom from all the past with clear resolve. 

They filed out to the jury room. God knows 
Murder is murder, whosoever dies, 
And yet there was a touch of something true 
In the man's words. How shall we drive the brute 
Where he shall never touch our finer lives 
With earth's foul reek? The twelve men answered 

that, 
Knowing the proper price for human blood. 
Next month the wretch whose ceaseless question 

beats 
Still in more hearts than one must take his stand, 
Wearing the black cap drawn about his face, 
And meet the wonder that perhaps is God. 



ALICIA TOLD ME 

Last night Alicia, with her stately air, 

Said, "Dear, I love you," she the good and fair. 

My heart could hardly hold its new delight. 

I scarcely knew that I had speech or sight, 

Or that 'twas really given me to hear 

Alicia telling me, "I love you, dear." 

Last night Alicia wore — I seemed to see 
Her gloves, her dress, her hat's fine filagree. 
The chandelier, that half her face in shade 
And half in more than passing beauty made, 
Comes back. Her dress was gray, at least I know. 
I never dreamed that she would love me so. 

Last night Alicia told me how it came 
There kindled in her heart so high a flame. 
I could not understand it. Still I seem 
To wander in the mazes of a dream. 
And yet what matters it, the while I know 
Alicia loves me? Yes, she told me so. 



81 



THE LOST ARCADY 

What is the road to Arcady? 

I went there once, God knows. 
The leaves were dancing in the path 

Now covered by the snows. 
What is the road to Arcady 

Where every light air blows? 

I loved my life in Arcady. 

When did I leave and why? 
Summer was always in the air, 

Blue always domed the sky. 
What was the road from Arcady 

I took with careless eye? 

There still are roads to Arcady, 

But is there one for me? 
I should have blazed the path I came 

On every wayside tree. 
Take me with you to Arcady, 

Young eyes that still can see. 



82 



APRIL IN THE AIR 

What though we sorrowed yesterday, 

As still your eyes declare? 
What though we clung with sudden tears 

To faiths become despair? 
Are there not other memories 

With April in the air? 

Beyond the hills, by field and stream, 

The sunlight on your hair, 
The awe and grace of womanhood 

Teaching my heart its prayer, 
Let us be boy and girl again 

With April in the air. 

Far and away across the world 

Letting our fancies fare, 
Braving with lifted eyes of joy 

Whatever heart may dare,— 
Let the old thrill come back again 

With April in the air. 



83 



IRON FROM SINAI 

Toil of the slave in the caverns of dark Sinai, 
Longings for freedom and life and the blue of the sky, 
Madness of hand and of brain in the gloom of the lamps, 
Surging insistence of pain in the poisonous damps. 
So from the rock was I torn and brought out to the 

day. 
Seamed with the dull of the iron, all unshapely I lay, 
Ready at Pharaoh's command to be molten, to glow, 
Losing my dross, to be changed to pure metal and 

flow 
Into the shape of the mould, till at last in men's 

hands, 
Bearing the flame, I should meet my new nature's 

demands. 

Sais the city of Pharaoh was fair in the light 
Glowing from thousands of lamps in the warmth of 

the night. 
I was but one that did honor to Neith in the feast, 
Lifting my soul to the stars that swept out of the 

east. 
Past me they moved to the sacrifice, women and 

men, 
Maidens and youths eager-hearted, and over them 

then 

84 



Iron from Sinai 85 

Soft fell the balm and the perfume of night with its 

damps, 
Rapture looked out of each face at the feast of the 

lamps. 

So to the goddess they came, but my place was afar. 
I could but wonder at Neith. Did she dwell in a 

star, 
Dying at morn when the sun lived again in his strength? 
What did she keep for her worshipers passing at 

length 
Out of the sun and the glory to death-lighted gloom ? 
Out of the spirit's assurance to rest and the tomb? 
Question on question might crowd as I heard the 

hymns roll, 
Mine but to bear up the oil for the flame in my bowl. 
Faces might come and be gone and the years die 

away; 
Neith were no nearer my knowing, for all the rapt 

play 
Of eager aspiring in eyes that were fire and then 

dust 
Age after age as they passed to the gods of their 

trust. 
I could but symbol a passion of worship not mine, 
Seeing but death and not daring to dream the divine. 

Rusted and old, tossed aside with the refuse of years, 
Lost to all use, to all pleasure, and even to tears, 
Borne to the crucible's torturing passion of fire, 



86 Iron from Sinai 

I was the chain of a slave at the forge's desire. 
Over the sea went our galley, the oars keeping time. 
Bitterly sweet was the song in its wave-beating 

rhyme. 
Soft the far distance where blue of the sea and the 

sky 
Seemed but the veil of an infinite peace to the eye. 
Sometimes a trireme of Greece or of Rome came in 

sight, 
Pirate ship loomed in the haze, or the fears of the 

night 
Deepened to terror past that of the goad or the lash 
When in the dark and the distance a light seemed to 

flash, 
Lurid, portentous. Then swiftly the oars beat the 

foam, 
Tense grew the muscles and fiercer the longing for 

home. 
Better were death than the bench and the oar and the 

chain ; 
Better the dirge than the galley song turning the 

brain, 
Mixing with laughter and song of a time-darkened 

day. 
Better, the body down-plunging, the soul through the 

spray 
Bubblingly seeking the wide empyrean of light, 
Free from the noisome and foul, from the day turned 

to night. 
What could a galley slave dream of a glory to be? 



Iron from Sinai 87 

What could a galley slave know but the toil of the 

sea? 
Visions might come of the maidens bright-eyed in the 

dance, 
Shouts of the youths in the hunting, or gleam of the 

lance. 
Ever a mist would becloud and the glory be past, 
Wild-eyed delirium draining the passion at last. 

Year after year sped our galley. The rowers sank 

down 
Dead at the laboring oar. I could see the soft brown 
Change to the death-coursing blue on the pain-twisted 

limbs 
Ere they were tossed to the shark or the sea bird that 

skims 
Lightly the surface and gathers its meal as it flies.. 
Then a new rower, the hope not yet dead in his eyes, 
Took the oar grimly, nor knew that awake or asleep 
I should not loose him until he was food for the deep. 

So year by year, day by day, I was servant to pain, 
Bondman to death, seeing ever with wistf illness vain 
Night on the Nile and a glory surpassing the stars, 
Dearer that now in the dark and the din and the 

jars, 
Trembling and strange, of the galley's response to the 

oar, 
Mine it should be to see glory about me no more. 



88 Iron from Siaai 

Fashioned again to a use and a purpose of man, 
I was a blade of Damascus. The swift flashings ran 
Over the heaps of the dying where peasant and lord 
Lay in the passionate peace of a somber accord. 
Hatred and wrong fell before me, and valor and 

strength, 
Daring too nobly against me, sank pulseless at length. 
Torn in the madness of conflict, the young and the 

old 
Gasped in the rush of their blood and grew one with 

the mold. 
Swung in the masterful might of a king's battle play, 
I was a scourge and a passion of ruthless dismay, 
Or, in the chance and the change of the mutable 

years, 
I was a promise of freedom that burned through man's 

fears. 

Now on a cushion of silk for the gazers to see, 
I shall be idle forever. New worships may be, 
Born of new hopes and new strivings, but never 

again 
Up to the stars shall I light the aspirings of men. 
Out of earth's hungry ambitions new serfdoms may 

come; 
Never again shall I chain the slave's agony dumb. 
Truths shall have birth in the flashings of battle-swung 

brand; 
Never again shall the hero hold me in his hand. 
Idle forever, no memories more to amass, 



Iron from Sinai 89 

Food for the thoughts of the happy who see me and 

pass, 
I can but know that they dig the new ore from the 

hills, 
Put it to wonderful uses iron only fulfills; 
Strings that make music when thousands are silent 

for awe, 
Wires that have gathered earth's secrets, whose 

whisper is law, 
Through which the passions of myriads sweep in a 

day, 
Sweep and are gone as they came, — and I stay, and I 

stay 
Here where they pause for a moment with curious 

eyes, 
Idly regretting the ages of knightly emprise. 
Gone is the glory forever, the curse and the song- 
Tell me, oh, tell me, what yearnings and agonies 

throng 
Under the satisfied ease that has deadened your 

fears, 
You who inherit forever the good of the years 



DRIFTWOOD 

Like driftwood burning in the grate, 

Salt with the boundless sea, 
Glowing with all the changing fate 
That drove it far and held it late, 
Broken and beaten you may be; 
But sad experience leaps and flies 
To light and color in your eyes. 

Like wreckage tossing with the tide, 
Borne from we know not where, 
The wildness of the waves you ride, 
However much your face may hide, 
Has left its mark of foul and fair, 
And brave experience leaps and plays 
About my dreams of your dead days. 

Like love before a driftwood fire, 

I watch the colors warm 
Paint on your cheeks each old desire, 
Make you a thing I might aspire 

To hold and shelter from the storm. 
This is your lure, to drift wind-tossed, 
Compass and soul and rudder lost. 



90 



Driftwood 91 

The firelight dies. Our fancies part. 
I, with the world, must shut my heart. 
Poor wasted beauty. It must be; 
The changing tide sweeps out to sea. 



AT THE MOTORMAN'S WINDOW 

Behind us the surge of midnight, silent and deep and 

black, 
Before us a moving marvel, the headlight along the 

track. 
I look from my little window, a splendor flying the 

dark. 
Our path is the sweep of an arrow clear-winged to the 

distant mark. 
White birches gleam for an instant, and through them 

the somber wood. 
A flash and the shadow follows, bright eyes and their 

sable hood. 
I look at a mist of branches, wind-stirred where the 

moon drops red. 
They pass; let me turn and follow the light on the 

track ahead. 

A farm-house lamp burns dimly. What issue of life 

or death 
Waits there for the gray of morning with tremulous, 

faltering breath? 
A splendor of wayside roses springs up like a rift of 

flame. 
The grasses are lush about them. They slip from the 

moving frame 

92 



At the Motorman's Window 93 

That circles the world before me, and then as I lose 

their glow 
The white of a mile-post passes, sepulchral and cold 

as snow. 
What matter the things that have been? What lure 

has the dark and dead? 
I follow the flaring glory, the light on the track ahead. 

At the unseen turn of midnight I pass to another day. 
Here somewhere I meet to-morrow, perhaps where the 

willows sway 
Down-drawn to the slumberous water that curls in a 

drifting dream. 
I see but a cream of lace-work that floats in the light 

of the stream. 
We leap from the bridge to the cutting that drives 

through the hill's deep heart; 
Shut in by the earthy blackness, my pulse feels a 

sudden start. 
A moment the hand is doubtful, and then we are 

forward sped 
On, on through the widening radiance, the light on the 

track ahead. 



ART AND THE WORLD 

He speaks: 

The winds are sullen on the lake to-night. 

The clouds are closing in. Before the dark, 

The driving mist will break against your face, 

And when I take you to the dingy rooms 

That still were bright because we called them home, 

Our home until — dear heart, for this last time 

I shall be prodigal and make the fire 

Leap up with rosy flames to keep you warm. 

Let us go back and shut the leaden sky 

Out of our hearts. You love it more than home? 

You would not lose Mount Rondure towering there 

Above the thickening glooms beyond your sight ? 

Nor I, dear heart, nor I, but now at last 

We put it all into that happy world 

That never can seem happy any more. 

All, dear; yes, all. I dare to think sometimes 

That just to dream and cry ourselves to sleep 

With some sweet wonder that our fancies shape 

Would be the bravest joy our hearts could know. 

(Another boat with a man and a woman in it pass 
across their course. The two are singing slowly in 
unison.) 

94 



Art and the World 95 

When the waters in the moonlight 

Are crossed with silver foam, 
In that soft and tender croon-light 
Who would pull the oar for home? 

With singing and laughter 

And eyes shining after, 
Hands trailing the water and heart in a dream, 

Let us drift in the star-shine, 

Souls lost in the far-shine 
That dies in the West with the daylight's last beam. 

When the city's lamps are flaming 

Their glow against the sky, 
From the joys our hearts are naming, 
Shall we seek them, you and I? 
With lap of waves lifting 
And swing of boat drifting, 
Eyes caught in the splendor that shimmers and 
flies, 
Let us dream, through the rowing, 
Of all things past knowing, 
While far on the waters the earth-glamour lies. 

(The boat floats by, and the two, after listening to 
the song a moment as it dies away, turn again toward 
each other and the current of their own thoughts.) 

He speaks: 

They love the world no more than you and I. 
They need its joy no more. They have no souls 
To take its good more bountifully than we, 



96 Art and the World 

To need it with a deeper need than we. 

Joy fills their hearts. For them no senses beat 

With thwartings, limitations, mad desires 

That make these clouds a dull and driving gloom 

To shut us in with failure undeserved. 

Why should they laugh when we must be denied 

The all to need of which our souls were born? 

She speaks: 

The old, old question. Can we so demand 
That every instinct burning in our flesh 
And every aspiration of our hearts 
Be gratified? That else this great good world 
Is neither great nor good? 

He speaks: 

Yes. Is it good, 
Can it seem good to you or good to me, 
If those whose instincts are the purest, best, 
Whose dreams most surely seek the highest heavens, 
Whose pleasures take them farthest from the brute, 
If they must feel their every prompting mocked 
While lesser creatures spread the wings of joy? 
What have I cared for? Music, books, and art. 
They are my world. Gross tastes of grosser minds 
Are lost in these more perfect ministries 
Of flesh to spirit, followed, nurtured, loved. 
If I am given these nobler cares and aims, 
If I must breathe the thin, pure mountain air 
In which the pulses beat to the glory of God, 
Must I not then be given the nobler life 



Art and the World 97 

With power to live it nobly to the full? 
Dear heart, dear heart, this is the bitter end. 
That picture that I painted with your arm 
Lying across the casement round and full, 
The sunlight on it and your upturned face, — 
How could they think that nothing but a daub 
When in yourjeyes the whole wide sky shone clear 
And on your lips life palpitated warm? 
There was my soul for all the world to see. 
What more have I to give them? Who could ask 
So much and! never seem to care or know? 
So much in vain 

She speaks: 

You do not paint for them. 
Have you not said almost with every stroke 
That folds the colors in the robe's deep blue 
Or rounds it on the cheek's too splendid flush, 
Have you not said that seeing beauty grow 
Under your hands was still your highest joy? 
Let us be happy, asking nothing more, 
Leaving the world the pleasures of its own, 
While we keep ours. You choose to paint a face 
And find your joy in painting. Rest in that 
And leave the world's rewards for those whose toil 
Is not itself reward. 

He speaks: 

Yes, if I could. 
That is the burning passion of it all, 
That when I seem to cry my soul to heaven 

7 



98 Art and the World 

In shapes and colors wonderful as truth, 

More beautiful than summer skies at dawn 

When purple peaks float in the irised clouds, 

That then, to make my joy more fast and sure, 

I still must have its warrant and excuse 

In acclamations of the common voice. 

To be so bound, so driven to depend 

Upon such chance of favor, like a god 

Stooping to beg of man a word of praise, 

A hallelujah or a loud Te Deum 

In token of his work's enduring worth, 

To be so checked, excluded from my own, 

Unless a thousand tongues, and they refuse, 

They who can neither see nor understand — 

Why should I need it? Being what I am, 

That is my warrant for the all I ask, 

Being so gifted with these finer tastes 

That hold me firmly bound to finer needs. 

That is the curse thatjmakes the world unjust, 

Makes God unjust, makes everything a lie, 

Even the beauty of your rounded throat 

That seems to give this poor and shrunken earth 

A fuller hope. I kiss its whiteness warm, 

Feeling myself a god in such a love, 

Seeming a Grecian singer in the sun 

With Aphrodite rising in the spray 

For him to clasp and claim ; and then while still 

Your eyes are shining on me and your breath 

Is warm against my cheek, as if a rose 

Had crushed its sweetness out against your breasts, 



Art and the World 99 

Then in the highest joy of all you give 
My eyes drop down upon my empty hands, ' 
Empty of gifts with which to fill your own, 
Empty of everything the world holds dear, I 
Empty of everything to match those needs 
Of spirit in the flesh that make us throb 
Twin passions of denial. 

She speaks: 

No, not I. 
Have I been less than happy hour by hour, 
Knowing beyond the world the all you are? 
We are too grossly selfish every way. 
How should we dare expect to be and have? 
To live those fancies of the noblest minds 
That lesser creatures cannot hope to know 
And with them still to have the joys of sense 
As those may have who live for sense alone? 
Such double measure of all human joy 
Were more than human. Each, somewhere, somehow, 
Is stinted, must be stinted. Make your choice. 
Be in yourself the things that you would be, 
Or have the things that are not of yourself, 
Things that the world can give or take away. 
No man both is and has. We pay the price 
Of being in not having, or again 
Of having in not being, lest at last 
Not even the gift of earth and all the suns 
Could make us happy. 



ioo Art and the World 

He speaks: 

Oh, these needs, these needs I 
These things that ought to be because they are ! 
I hate such trifling wisdom, paying toll 
To meekness, prudence, all the host of fears 
That counsel compromise. I loathe them all. 
It is my right to have because I am. 
How should I care to be the more and more 
Through which man leaves behind the sodden brute, 
If every upward leap my spirit makes 
Narrows the hope that I may claim and hold 
The earthly good, the earthly fair and fine, 
The earthly tender as I need them more ? 
Man cannot be and have? Then down he sinks 
And wallows in the mire, a loathsome thing 
With eyes that gleam out of a foul, scarred face, 
Dumb aspiration prisoned in the muck. 
There is no god, no justice in the world, 
If so our souls and bodies fly apart. 
We have outlived that monkish faith and fear. 
Our noblest souls should be our kings of sense, 
Should clothe themselves in splendor, house them- 
selves 
In palaces of wonder, touch the skies 
In leaping fancies where the spirit springs 
To towering pinnacles of earthly pride. 
Why should I care to paint — I do not care. 
Let me go back and turn them to the walls, 
Each canvas with the joy of earth abloom, 



Art and the World 101 

Lying about a world itself a lie. 

Let each mad daub be splotched with murky black 

Until at last it tells the bitter truth. 

Then with my eyes subdued, my spirit sunk 

Down to its tenement — Until I feel 

The clutch of death and all my being whirls 

In one mad tumult and my breath draws hard, 

I shall rebel forever, as a king 

Chained in a dungeon curses every slave 

Who brings him water when his right is wine. 

(They pass under the shadow of a church on the 
shore where worshipers have just gathered for the 
evening service of prayer and song. They begin 
singing a hymn at this moment, and the two in the 
boat listen.) 

For freighted argosies that brave the sea, 

For wealth of fold and field, 
For ringing laughter when our hearts are free, 
We offer here our praise and thanks to thee, 

Giver of every gift our meadows yield, 
The fruit of vine and tree. 

For larger hopes and more ennobling aims, 

For passions flying earth, 
For every finer thought or deed that flames 
Out of our dust, we praise thy name of names, 

Lord of the spirit's every purest birth 
That springs above our shames. 



102 Art and the World 

For every unattainable desire, 

That makes us kin with thee, 
For every thwarting when our hearts are fire 
/Too boldly vain, we praise thee high and higher, 
Giver of good through ill that sets us free 
And bids us still aspire. 

For every need that binds us man with man 

In service fair and sweet, 
For human wishes as they still outran 
The wiser giving of thy wondrous plan, 

We praise the grace that draws us to thy feet, 
Lord of love's fullest span. 

(The singing stops, and they remain silent for a 
moment in the boat as it drifts along the shore. The 
woman's face shows itself the more responsive to the 
song.) 

She speaks: 

We ask too much. We are in every way 
Too selfish, too unmindful of the bond 
Of human fellowship. You should have said : 
It is my right to have the world's best gifts, 
Because I serve the world with hand and voice, 
Because its needs are thrilling in my heart, 
Its sorrows wound me and its joys inspire. 
Give in the measure of the service done, 



Art and the World 103 

The hopes enhanced, the ways made straight and clear 

For man's endeavor looking on and on. 

I ask no more. That is the full reward. 

If what I am mates not with what I do, 

If finer instincts shape not finer deeds, 

Let me but share the common toil of men 

And walk content along the common ways. 

That is the thing we should have dared to say. 

I urged you selfishly to selfish aims. 

Now that they seem the worthless things they are, 

I fling them by and from my heart of hearts 

Urge you to fling them by. 

He speaks: 

Too late, too late. 
They have been snatched away like trifling gauds 
The light wind catches in its playful sweep. 
I have not given them up, but there they fly, 
My aims no more, but yet the things I watch 
With never changing passions of regret. 
I have no aims. How can I have again? 
This failure is the end. To-morrow night 
When we have locked the rooms and dropped the key 
Into our landlord's palm beside the gold 
His hungry eyes have waited for too long, 
When we have lost it all, the books, the prints, 
The easel in its place, the strange carved things, 
The yellowing keyboard where you played and sang 
And helped me at my work, the swords and guns, 



104 Art and the World 

Old with a hundred mysteries of death, 

The fussy dresses that you used to wear, 

Posing a princess, and the coronet 

We bought with such wild pleasure. All, dear, all, 

When we have lost it all to-morrow night, 

I shall not be a painter any more. 

These hands will never bring the dead to life, 1 

Lords in their pride and ladies in their bloom, 

Fair children with their great round smiling eyes 

Full of the dawning wonder of the world. 

I cannot think, I cannot understand 

What I shall be, how I shall live at all, 

When weary hour by hour and day by day 

I beat the pictures back into my brain, 

Lest I should so forget the price of wheat, 

And then we might not have a home at all. 

For you, for you, you who have still been kind, 

Patient, and hopeful through the darkest hours 

When cursing fate I cursed your patience too, 

Not for myself, for you, I shall be glad 

Until I smile in drudgery's despite. 

Perhaps at last, seeing the color come 

Back to your cheeks and gladness to your eyes, 

Seeing you dressed as beauty should be dressed 

In gowns of price, I shall somehow believe 

You are my picture, still more wonderful 

Than any I have painted or conceived. 

There still are dreams. To-morrow when it comes- 

It must come — every moment — near and near. 

I cannot half believe it even now. 



Art and the World 105 

(Their boat has drifted on until they have passed 
into the little river and have come under the first of 
the bridges that span it. In the number of those pass- 
ing one way and the other over the bridge, there is a 
company of young people who are clearly on their way 
to some social gathering and whose good spirits are 
evident in the song they are singing.) 

Your eyes are wine, a vintage warm and mellow, 

Your hands are healths that pledge the lifted cup. 
Here once again each meets his heart's true fellow. 
This is the board where love may pause and sup. 

Then pour out the wine as we sing 

With hand clasping hand in a ring. 

Let them ponder and sigh 

Who are waiting to die, 

Who never have dared have their fling. 

We are living with joy on the wing. 

I may forget; you teach me to remember. 

I may "be sad; you thrill my heart with joy. 
Like April airs that linger through November, 
You breathe a girl and keep me still a boy. 

Then lift up the wine of your eyes 

While it brims to my heart's glad surprise. 

Let them worry and wait 

Who still hang upon fate, 

Who defer and delay, overwise. 

We live and take youth as it flies. 



106 Art and the World 

(The sound of the singing dies away down the street 
across the river, and the boat drifts on.) 

She speaks: 

The world is full of youth and youth's delight, 
And we are young, too young to see the end, 
Too young to talk of life or know its worth. 
Let us be happy while we build anew 
In fairer seeming with more worthy aims 
The years to come. 

He speaks: 

I need to be resigned. 
That is a pious and philistine mood 
I never learned, but for your sake to-night 
I will sit down and laugh against defeat, 
While once again you robe yourself in dreams 
For me to paint before we lose them all. 
And once again, while violin and flute 
And horn and drum are sounding at the dance 
The merchant prince gives just across the street, 
Beside the window I will stand and watch, 
Seeing the carriages and all the lights, 
The women with their jeweled necks agleam 
And all the splendor as they turn and laugh. 
Only I will not ask why you and I, 
To whom such things could mean a thousandfold 
The little that they mean to his poor soul 
Fatting on sins and shames, I will not ask 
Why we should be shut out to starve our eyes 



Art and the World 107 

And feel our little pleasures grown as dull 

As wayside pebbles by the sheen of silk. 

Just for your happiness, to see you smile 

Forgivingly with eyes that seem to shine 

With that old rapture once the whole of love, 

I will enjoy it all, and then once more 

Sit down beside you in the little room, 

And so be glad. Why did I never know 

The way to service is in serving you? 

Making you happy? I believe some day — 

Oh, you will teach me — teach me everything,^ 

To love, to live, perhaps at last to paint 

For men's approval. Yes, but that can wait. 

Here is the landing; here I find the world, 

The world that is, in place of that which was, 

The world of service. Come, shall we go on, 

Like children walking slowly hand in hand 

And marveling at everything they see? 

The new, new world ! And I shall see, perhaps, 

New things to paint, and things almost as fair, 

Seen with your eyes, so much more true than mine. 

(He has tied the boat to the bank, and in the gather- 
ing dusk they go up the street together. There 
they are soon lost in the hurrying crowds of men and 
women making up that old world that is always 
strange and new.) 



ARTISTS 

When the good old Saxon vikings drove their ships 

from land to land, 
Beauty was the thing they carried, mail on breast and 

sword in hand. 
Gems were on the hilt ; the flashings made the human 

wonder fine. 
Then the maker was the artist and men thought him 

half divine. 
How they gloated on the metal that he shaped from 

dull red ore, 
Turning earthly dross to splendor for the battle's 

sounding roar. 
How they praised the work of Wieland, praised the 

smith whose cunning skill 
Was a marvel of creation waiting on the artist's will. 

Makers, artists, as we fashion statues, bronzes, shapes 
of steel 

To a something fine and perfect where the stone shall 
still reveal, 

Not the clay inert and formless, but the mold of 
human thought, 

Human fancies, aspirations, into earth's hard sub- 
stance wrought, 

1 08 



Artists 109 

Do we cry the forward, forward of the years that leap 

and run? 
Making swords no more, but flashings of new triumphs 

in the sun? 
We who breathe the Saxon spirit, do we feel the 

Saxon thrill 
In some fresh adventurous splendor of our new creating 

skill? 

Makers, artists! In the glory of our later days of 

peace 
Do we keep the throbbing passion as the things we 

make increase? 
Do we feel some monster engine as a master work of 

art, 
With the maker's purpose in it as the red blood in his 

heart ? 
They who fashioned swords of conquest felt an artist 

joy as pure 
As the painter's when his canvas takes a pageant's 

golden lure. 
We who are earth's last creators, born to make the 

world anew, 
Out of chaos and the darkness sweep upon a braver 

view. 

Ours to make the mountains spirit from the teeming 

brain of man. 
Ours to find unmeasured beauties in the things we do 

and plan. 



no Artists 

Eager, happy, lords of secrets that the earth has hidden 

long, 
We are children of the dawning and our fellowship is 

song. 
By the mast pile up the treasure as the vikings did of 

old, 
Trophies of the loom and workshop wonderful as gems 

and gold. 
Set the wheel and watch the furrow that the keel 

leaves in our wake. 
We are sailing toward to-morrow, waiting for the day 

to break. 



COATS FOR THE TOURNEY 

The coat I loved was firm and fine, a splendor 
Woven of myths and faiths as old as time. 
I wore it as a knight 
Wears shield and armor, bright 
Sweeping my way where all the galleries eyed me; 
Yet when I left the fight 
The sun had burned its colors out, the tender 

Of foemen's blades had slashed it till, beside me, 
It fell in rags and dulled my sword-hilt's chime 
Beating my belt's bronze buckle, foul with slime. 

Time heals my hurt. I am all hale. I gather 
New strength and life. Once more I love the sun, 
But what shall clothe me warm? 
What coat shall shut the storm 
Out of my breast when all the winds are round 
me? 
I cannot patch or form 
The broken threads again. I toss them, rather, 

Out where the driven tempest's furies hound me; 
And yet unclothed I need not think to run 
The wintry highway till my dream is won. 

in 



ii2 Coats for the Tourney 

There are new cloths and textures, strange new 
fashions. 
They seem grotesque, and yet I long to go 
On, on, with plume and lance 
Tossing as I advance, 
With love's fresh favor from my helmet flying. 
Some tremble of romance 
Must yet endure to meet my living passions. 

Some web must yet be woven for the dyeing 
That makes it stainless through time's pauseless 

flow, 
Changeless, secure, whatever wild winds blow. 

The coat that I shall wear ! Oh, men, my brothers, 
New faiths must be. I cannot ride the lists 
Unbonneted, unclad, 
Joyless, my heart grown mad. 
Give me your gonfalon to belt about me. 
Tell me what cry you had 
Deep in the heart, fearing the ears of others. 

Give it my lips, and not the world shall rout me, 
But dawn shall break a glory through the mists 
And light my sword-hilt's clustered amethysts. 



NEWS FROM YORKTOWN 

"Past two o'clock and Cornwallis is taken." 
How the voice rolled down the street, 
Till the silence rang and echoed 
With the stir of hurrying feet ! 
In the hush of the Quaker city, 
As the night drew on to morn, 
How it startled the troubled sleepers, 
Like the cry for a man-child born. 

"Past two o'clock and Cornwallis is taken." 
How they gathered, man and maid, 
Here the child with a heart for the flintlock, 
There the trembling grandsire staid. 
From the stateliest homes of the city, 
From hovels that love might scorn, 
How they followed that ringing summons, 
Like the cry for a king's heir born. 

"Past two o'clock and Cornwallis is taken." 
I can see the quick lights flare, 
See the glad, wild face at the window 
Half dumb in a breathless stare. 
In the pause of an hour portentous, 
In the gloom of a hope forlorn, 
How it throbbed to the star-deep heavens, 
Like the cry for a nation born. 
8 113 



ii4 News from Yorktown 

"Past two o'clock and Cornwallis is taken. 
How the message is sped and gone 
To the farm and the field and the forest 
Till the world is one vast dawn. 
To distant and slave-sunk races 
Bowed down in their chains that morn, 
How it swept on the wings of heaven, 
Like a cry for God's justice born. 



TAKING THE ROAD 

Here is my task. Why should I turn and go, 

Seeking in fairer fields a kindlier foe? 

Here is my task, and with it alien eyes 

Blaze foul and leering hate and mean surmise. 

Here is my task; I cannot turn aside. 

Here I must press straight on while fools deride. 

This is for me the one thing most worth while, 

Not to be lured by some well practiced smile, 

Not to be driven by a threat or blow 

Out of the road it is my will to go. 

It may not have a path the world can see. 

I make the paths, and in them I am free. 

Here is my task and here my joy at once. 
Why should I care to be some dawdling dunce 
Breathing the perfume of his lady's lips 
Idly, as flap the sails of anchored ships? 
I stretch my muscles, lift my head, and laugh. 
Being myself is all the wine I quaff. 

This is for me enough, that I so choose. 

I trust no toss of coin, and I refuse 

All leadings of dumb chance. Against the net 

The destinies may weave I shall not fret, 

But they must give me passage till I turn 

And write my own last message on my urn. 



"5 



A SHADOW OF THINGS TO COME 
(Colossians II: 17) 

IN MEMORY OF HENRY WALLACE 

Forward the seed looks to the waving~grain," 
And who than he more loved to see things grow? 

No one could thrill more in an April rain, 
Or draw more rapture from a harvest row. 

Forward his heart looked, and his thoughts grew warm, 
Giving his love an ever widening range, 

Keeping an eye serene, whatever storm 
Drifted his fortunes on the sea of change. 

Forward his life looked; that is still its grace. 

To-morrow when we touch some burning hope, 
"This was his vision, " we shall say, and pace 

A larger world beneath his horoscope. 

Forward his world looked; so his steps were sure. 

He kept the path and knew its farthest goal. 
For him earth's wandering lights could have no lure. 

He trusted man and God and his own soul. 



116 



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